ISO/IEC 25010 is an international standard that defines a product quality model for software and systems, breaking quality down into characteristics and sub-characteristics that can be used to specify, evaluate and discuss it. It belongs to the SQuaRE (Systems and software Quality Requirements and Evaluation) family of standards and describes quality as the degree to which a system satisfies the stated and implied needs of its stakeholders, and so provides value.
Why it matters: Ask a product manager, a developer, a tester and a user what software quality means and the answers often differ. A shared model gives teams a common vocabulary and a checklist of perspectives, so attributes such as security or maintainability are not forgotten while everyone focuses on functionality.
In practice: The current version of the product quality model groups quality into nine characteristics: functional suitability, performance efficiency, compatibility, interaction capability, reliability, security, maintainability, flexibility and safety. Teams use these to shape non-functional requirements, plan test coverage and structure quality reviews. Testers often walk through the list to ask which characteristics matter most for a given product and where the risks lie.
Examples:
- A team writing a test strategy uses the characteristics as headings to make sure reliability and security are covered alongside features.
- Before a release, a tester checks maintainability and compatibility concerns that would never show up in functional test results.
Common pitfalls:
- Treating the model as a universal definition of quality, when what matters most still depends on the context, the purpose and the people involved.
- Trying to test every characteristic equally, rather than using the model to prioritise the ones that matter for this product.
Is ISO/IEC 25010 a testing standard? No. It is a quality model that describes what quality is made of, while testing standards describe how to test.
How many quality characteristics are in ISO/IEC 25010? The 2023 revision lists nine product quality characteristics. The earlier 2011 version listed eight, so older material may show a different set.
